Pickles for the Young at Heart
<<2003-04-12 - 2:56 a.m.>>

Which is a relief.

And I turned it in and then called Zibby to tell her happily about having turned it in, and then ran into Claire. We walked up to Safeway, and on the way she put flowers in my hair and bought me tea. We wandered around Safeway, buying delicious things (tomato-basil bisque and goat cheese and grapes, oh God), and then on the way out we ran into her boyfriend, who offered a ride back to campus, , which we accepted. Only we couldn't find his car to wait in it, and so we stood out in front of Safeway eating sour pickles with such great enthusiasm that a bent old woman put her hand on my arm and told us that we reminded her of some advertisement, and when Claire offered her a pickle, she said, "No, I'll leave that to you kids."

And finally Dan emerged, with a rather ostentatiously dreadlocked friend, each carrying two cases of Pabst for the languorous debauchery that was progressing on the squishy front lawn, where there were people playing softball and people sitting on picnic tables and talking and people standing around a big keg. We drove back to campus via a short stop at Dan's house, eating pickles, the car slewing crazily over a particularly bumpy street and finally depositing us back at our door, where we dropped off groceries and tasted Noah's homemade hard cider.

And I want Claire to come stay with me for a bit over the summer. We would go to Small's in the wee hours, listen to jazz and tap our feet, tap tap tap, wiggle our seated hips, and Claire would get that blissed-out look, and I would be glad to have brought her there. We would eat dinner at the dining room table even though there'd be only the two of us and we would have room to spare at the kitchen table. Those are my images.

I had dinner in the room, and sat around enjoying my freedom from the paper that had grown to resemble a giant, if physically flimsy, Sword of Damocles. Somehow the phone failed to ring when Miriam called to tell me to get on down to the theater to see Rowen in "The Bad Seed," but at some point I checked my messages, assumed I was already substantially late, and moseyed on down to catch the second act.

There was a message from John on the voicemail. He sounded upset. He told me to give him a call, any time, no matter how late.

It made me anxious. I don't know what there is to say to him anymore. I don't know if I have the guts to tell him how much the way he handled The Incident hurt me, how my efforts at containing my anger paralyzed me for the past two weeks. How do you tell someone that you're not sure you want to be friends with them anymore? Could I ever say No, I don't want to go swingdancing with you this summer, and no, you can't spoil me, and you certainly can't just go on pretending nothing has happened when it hurts me to look at your picture to the extent that I have turned it facedown on my shelf? It's funny, The Incident itself feels closed in my my mind. No further need to discuss it. But the moment before, the week afterward—a whole different story.

I think I still maintain the illusion that one day there will be someone who will think of me first, someone who would genuinely never knowingly hurt me (the usual loopholes apply here: for my own good, if it were an emergency, life or death situation, et cetera). Is this an illusion? I go looking for Everything All in One Place. And so I have infatuations with people. I always feel like I have to make up my mind about someone, conclusively, right now. Analyze and reanalyze. It's Alex. It's Chloë. It's Nikki. It's Max. It's Kara. It's Megan. It's John. It's Claire. It's Fury. The Perfect Person, the one person who will never hurt me and always take care of me and never disappoint me either by turning out to be not as wonderful as I thought they were or by letting me down. Faces flash by like in a flipbook, and I settle so easily on someone new. I entertain momentary flights of fantasy. That person, maybe. I've only talked to him twice, but still. Ms. D'Amico, or Derek, or Eddie, or Tim or Todd or—or—or—I just keep looking.

Interestingly, this does not seem to apply to Moira, Avi, or Gene. I'm not sure why Moira and Avi are exempt, but Gene is exempt because, although I'm terribly attracted to Gene, we have no personal connection at all.

Seguing gracelessly back to some semblance of narrative. Consider that the intermission. Gene is the point of connection, as I passed him (have settled on male pronouns, as per Fury's guidance) on my way into the theater.and went weak in the knees. Literally. It's funny that my Gene-reflex is not triggered in Gender & History, as he is in the class. Perhaps this is a survival mechanism.

"The Bad Seed" wasn't bad. One actress, playing the rather obsequious upstairs neighbor, was just fantastic. And the girl playing the mother was pretty good. The girl playing Rhoda was overghoulish, though, which eliminated a good portion of the creepiness that's supposed to emanate from the juxtaposition of a sweet, childlike exterior but a character devoid of human compassion. And Rowen—well, I only saw her in one scene, drunk and disordered, but she seemed off, somehow. Trying too hard, maybe? There was that "acting" look in her eyes. Then again, that's kind of par for the course for Rowen sometimes. I found it interesting that she retained this expression even during the curtain call.

And afterwards, we waited around for Rowen and the girl who'd asked Fury to Spring Formal came up to us all "Would you and your friends like to...hang out...with us later?" and there was awkwardness and Fury and I giggled conspiratorially over this and over Gene, who swooped down on the actress who'd given the bravura performance as Monica and gave her a rather intense kiss, and damn it, Gene is not single, but it doesn't really matter, since I am really just reveling in my attraction from afar.

A bit of wandering, Fury in and out, and eventually Kara and Jim and Rowen and Miriam and I picked up snacks and video and retreated to the Winch social room for a viewing of "The Full Monty." Talking afterward, it would seem that Kara has exited the Fury Phase and entered the Jim Phase. She says that Fury talks down to her (which I have to say I sometimes agree with), and she has yet to explicate Jim's glory. It's not that I don't enjoy Jim, it's just that he doesn't particularly interest me.

We walked back to our corner of campus in the rain (real rain, not typical Portland drifty misty rain), and he's nice enough, but—there's no zing to him. He feels like nothing special. But in any case, I got back to my dorm relatively dry, and tonight I will go to sleep without the panic of I-should-be-working.

Tomorrow I will brunch at my psych professor's home, I will renew my passport, and I will copy-edit the Quest, and tonight was friendly and free. Feels so funny to be free.

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